In half an hour the trees of the Palais Royal were stripped of their leaves and looked bare and wintry. From a modeller's shop opening on the gardens, a wax bust of the popular ex-minister was produced, and was passed along above the heads of the crowd. Some one flung a black crape veil over it. 'Forth into the streets,' was called. And the multitude rolled out into the Rue de Richelieu. Suddenly, with a cry of exultation, Madame Louison pounced upon her spouse, and carried him off to her shop. Nicholas caught a glimpse of him ineffectually struggling, like a white moth in a spider's clutches, as the lady drew him down into the hole he usually inhabited. Nicholas drew Gabrielle's arm through his, and she clung to him, otherwise she would have been swept away. 'We must escape as soon as possible,' said the young man; 'do not let go your hold, Gabrielle--I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle André. You must excuse me if I squeeze your arm, but I am so afraid of losing you.' 'Where is Madeleine?' 'Madeleine can take care of herself.' 'But where is she?' 'There--a little ahead of us; she has been drifted forward, we must try to reach her and link her on to us; it will not do to separate.' 'Can we not escape yet?' 'No. Impossible; I wish we could, but the crowd is too dense. We must rejoin Madeleine first, or she will not know what has become of us.' The sun glared down on the moving torrent of angry life. It was like a viscous stream of lava poured from a volcano; the sun flashed on bayonets, axes, large knives which had been attached to poles and made into rude pikes. The flashes from the weapons, as the sun lit them, resembled leaping flames above the lava flood. The heat began to dissolve the wax bust, the black crape attracted the heat unnecessarily, and it slowly dissolved into a shapeless mass. Nevertheless it was borne along, its bearers being unconscious of the transformation that was being effected in their idol. The stream pursued its course along the streets of S. Martin, S. Denis, and S. Honoré, and spread out into a tossing lake in the Place Vendôme, where lived several of the revenue-farmers, but not Foulon, whose house was in the Rue du Temple. Here was drawn up a detachment of dragoons, which charged the people, and drove them back into the streets that opened on the square. A French guardsman was trampled under the feet of the horses and killed. Nicholas took the opportunity of the dissolution of the compact mass to disengage himself and Gabrielle from the mob, and to escape with her down the street before the Convent of the Feuillants. 'Where is Madeleine?' asked Gabrielle.